by J P Barnaby
“I said I didn’t like to read fiction. They were both kind of Bible study books. My aunt got them for me.”
“And you read them anyway?”
Kyle shrugged. “I colored a bit too.”
“You mean, like, with crayons?” Noah asked with surprise.
“Yeah. When I was a kid that’s pretty much all we had, pieces of paper and this box of broken crayons someone had left. It’s calming.” Kyle gazed out the window again.
“So what happened when you got here?”
“Miss Sarah picked me up at the bus station and I came to live with her. We spent a lot of time in those first two weeks watching TV. I think she was happy to have someone to watch with. I didn’t really care. I hadn’t watched TV much growing up.”
“So if you didn’t read and you didn’t watch TV, what did you do growing up?” Noah changed lanes into the far left to hang out until his exit.
“I dunno. Normal stuff, I guess. We worked in the garden, helped my dad with church stuff, and helped Mama make meals.” Kyle watched the miles of green rush past the window.
“So your dad was a preacher?”
“I guess.”
They sat in silence for a bit, watching the miles of I-85 whir past under the tires of the old truck. Noah couldn’t think of anything else to ask Kyle, who seemed to be getting uncomfortable talking about himself.
“How did they die?” Noah asked quietly.
Kyle ripped his eyes from the scenery to stare at him.
“You got on a bus and came here all alone as a teenager to your aunt’s house. I guess I assumed—”
“My father is alive, so far as I know. Aunt Mary tried to find out how my mama was, but she couldn’t. I just hope….” What little life had been in Kyle’s eyes drained from them.
“I know how that feels,” Noah said.
“You can’t possibly.”
The rest of the ride was quiet as Noah tried to puzzle out what Kyle had meant. He’d lost his own father; surely Kyle could see how they were the same. He wanted to be angry about it, but the pain in Kyle’s expression stopped him. Something bad lurked beyond the shadows of Kyle’s admission, something dark, and it haunted him.
Noah reached across the console and held Kyle’s hand.
“Kyle—” He was interrupted by the shrill ring of his cell phone. It was a Manhattan number, but one he didn’t recognize. He touched the button on the steering wheel to answer.
“Hello?”
“Noah, it’s Karen.” He glanced at his cell phone lying on the console beside him.
“Hi, Karen.”
“Are you still in Georgia?” Her voice was flat and heavy, like cream on the verge of spoiling.
“Listen, Karen, about that—I think we should talk to—”
“Are you still in Georgia, Noah?”
“Yes.”
The line went quiet for a long moment, and Noah held his breath, afraid to speak and afraid of what would come next. The silence in the car felt absolute. He couldn’t hear Kyle breathing either—just the steady flap of the tires hitting the road.
“Noah, this is James Tim from Human Resources,” another voice, firm but dispassionate, said through the harsh connection. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hitchens, but we need to terminate your employment as of today. Your desk contents will be shipped to you, and any PTO you had accumulated prior to your bereavement leave will be paid out in your final check. Do you have any questions for me?”
Noah’s hands tingled. His arms, even his chest, had this weird disconnected feeling of panic. They were firing him. He had no job. How would he pay his rent on the apartment? What the hell was he going to do? Noah took a deep breath and collected himself.
“Is this your direct line that you’ve called me from?” he asked.
“It is.”
“My attorney may have some questions, so I wanted to make sure I had your number,” Noah said, more calmly than he felt. It was a bluff, but all he had.
“Of course.”
Noah disconnected the line and sat in stunned silence, his eyes fixed on the road. Kyle held his hand tighter like they were both waiting for a storm.
Chapter Fifteen
THE BASEMENT light came on without flickering, which Noah was grateful for. If there were going to be spiders—and of course there would be spiders—maybe the lights would keep them away. Hiding in the boxes that he needed to open, probably. Ugh.
“Careful on the steps, they’re kind of uneven,” he called over his shoulder.
Kyle followed him down into the depths of the cellar. “Wow,” he said.
Wow was right. It had been years since Noah had been down there. The walls were lined with boxes—plastic bins on the floor, wooden crates piled on some and cardboard boxes on others. There were piles in the middle of the floor too. “Gah,” Noah groaned. “I’m never gonna get through all these. Good thing the basement never flooded—all these would be ruined.”
“That’s probably why the plastic boxes are on the bottom. Keep them off the floor so the others don’t get wet. That’s how we stored stuff back… home.”
“Makes sense. Okay. We found some nice first editions, so let’s see if there’s anything valuable down there. Can you read any of these labels?”
Kyle bent over and peered at one. Noah admired his butt in the snug jeans but dragged his perverted mind back to the subject at hand. “Estate Sale, June 2017,” Kyle read off. “Leather bound and Book Club.” He made a note on the clipboard he carried.
“From the sublime to the ridiculous.”
“Why?”
“Well, leather-bound books are sometimes valuable, but book club editions usually aren’t. They’re printed on cheap paper, and the covers aren’t the same as the regular published editions. That’s how come the clubs can afford to sell them so cheap. I wonder what the leather-bound ones are. Bet they bought a set from, like, Time Life or something. World’s Greatest Literature—and I’ll bet none of them have been read.”
“Why wouldn’t someone read them?”
“They buy them for decoration and read the book club editions. Of course, that makes them more salable.” Noah squinted up at another box. “Okay, this one says Auction—that sounds promising.”
It happened so fast neither Noah nor Kyle could react. Noah stepped on an uneven bit of flooring and bumped into a stack of boxes, which teetered and fell…
…but they didn’t. Instead they hung a moment in midair over Noah’s head, and then he felt a hand shove him forward into Kyle’s arms.
Which closed tightly around him as the boxes tumbled into a heap, breaking and spilling books everywhere.
Noah drew back, shocked, and stared into Kyle’s eyes. “What? What happened?”
“I have no idea,” Kyle started to say, but the words went muffled as Noah leaned forward and kissed him.
Noah drew back, startled at himself. “Gosh,” he burbled, “I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t exactly expect to—is it okay? I’m sorry.”
Kyle’s face was scarlet, stunned. He put his fingers to his lips.
Then Noah whirled back to the pile of books. “Henry!”
“Take it easy, child,” his soft voice drawled. “Not likely those books could hurt me.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m right here. But doin’ so much physical labor after bein’ dead for fifty years takes it out of a body—even a disembody.”
“Is that even a word?”
“In the ordinary scheme of things, it’s a verb, but I think in my case, it functions just as well as a noun.”
Kyle was looking around frantically as if trying to spot the speaker. Could he hear Henry? He never had before, but maybe the exertion stopped Henry from being able to hide. “Who’s that, Noah? Where is he?”
Guess he could.
“That’s Henry, Kyle. I told you about him.”
“You said he was a friend from New York!”
“Well, I never said he was from New York. I just sa
id he couldn’t help me much.”
“That’s an unkind thing to say, child. I thought I’d been very helpful.”
“Yeah, you have. But it’s not like you can haul boxes. At least not without losing your ectoplasm or whatever.”
“Noah—is it a spirit?”
“Who, Henry? Nah, he’s… well, yeah, I guess he is. A ghost, anyway.”
“Spirits are evil, Noah! He needs to be cast out!”
“Listen up, boy,” Henry said sternly, “I’ve been here a lot longer than you have, and if there’s any casting out to be done, I think that’s given me the right to do the casting. As for evil—son, I was deacon at the First Baptist for nigh on forty years.” He muttered, “Evil. Bah.”
“Henry’s not evil, Kyle. He’s been a big help to me. I grew up in this store, but I never really did much more than occasionally run the register for Dad. Henry knows all about books.” Noah sighed and sat on one of the boxes. “I’m a freaking literature major and a dead guy knows more about books than I ever will. Maybe I should have majored in library science.”
“Library’s a science now?”
“That’s so creepy,” Kyle said.
“Library science?”
“No, the fact that I can’t see who’s talking.”
“Well, you can hear me, so that’s a start. I’d have bet you never would have if I hadn’t exerted myself like that. You haven’t exactly got an open mind.”
“Henry, be nice. He can’t help it if he grew up in the back of beyond. When I moved to New York, it was pretty overwhelming to me too.” Noah brightened as Henry began to materialize, sitting on a box across from Noah.
Kyle turned and blinked rapidly. “Oh.”
“You can see him?”
“Um—is he a, a brown person with glasses?”
“A brown person? I am a black man, you skinny white boy. A proud black man.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t—I never knew any before I moved to Chicago, and the people back home weren’t very nice about brown people. I saw some in Chicago but never really met them.”
“Brown people?” Henry looked to Noah.
“What?”
“Is that an acceptable term nowadays?”
“Um—more like people of color?”
“Let me get this straight—‘colored people’ is a no-no but ‘people of color’ is okay?” Henry shook his head. “I will never understand this age.”
“Well, it’s because that’s a phrase they chose, where the other they didn’t. It’s like you might hear a Lithuanian person call another one a Lugan, but it’s really rude if you do.” He glanced at Kyle. “I dated a Lithuanian guy for a while.”
“Hmm. Well, that makes sense. At least we’ve moved that far. So. Are you boys going to pick up these boxes? It’s a little bit beyond my capabilities at this juncture and that one”—he pointed at the auction box—“looks promising.”
Kyle was still staring at Henry. After a moment he said, “Oh. Yes. Okay.”
Noah chuckled and slipped off the box he was sitting on, moving it over to the side so he could work on the piled ones. A moment later Kyle joined him in picking up the rest.
Henry supervised.
Chapter Sixteen
“BUT YOU have to—it’s tradition!” Thad cried. The giant block rows in his Rubik’s Cube costume banged together, cardboard clashing as he tried to follow Noah in through the front door of the bookstore. It took some finagling, and finally he had to turn at an angle, but he made it.
“I’ve got too much to do, Thad. I just got fired. I have to make this work now. Kyle has some experience with all this coffee stuff, so we’re trying to get that off the ground. I don’t have time to play dress-up with the kids.” Noah made his way back up to the counter and the box of books waiting to be put back in their places. Why did people grab books and leave them all over? Did they think he had nothing better to do than clean up after them?
Thad followed, awkwardly trying not to knock books off their shelves.
“You can’t afford not to,” Thad said, putting a hand on Noah’s arm. “When I first started in business here, no one wanted to buy things from me because I was different. I swear to God, you’d think they never saw a fag before. I was like an alien.”
Noah sat the box down and turned. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yep, gay unicorn alien.” Thad raised his arm as much as the costume would allow. “Anyway, the way I got people to accept me, to get that I was an eccentric old antiques-selling queer, was by being part of the community. I joined little committees to improve the town, I volunteered for their food drives, and I pass out candy to their kids on Halloween. Get me?”
“So, you’re saying to win over the community, I have to dress in drag and do the hula?” Noah hadn’t dressed up in a very long time. He didn’t really get into Halloween, though his dad loved it.
“Yep.” The p popped with enthusiasm. “Got any ideas?”
“Nope, but I’ll think of something.”
“You’d better hurry. The insanity starts at five,” Thad said, turning his bulky cube back toward the front of the store. “If you need help, just holler. I’ve got all kinds of stuff in my closet.”
Noah laughed at his lascivious wink.
“What the good gracious was he wearing?” Henry asked, floating in through the wall. “I start to come in here and he’s dressed like a boxy stoplight.”
“It was a Rubik’s Cube. They were a child’s toy popular sometime in the eighties. You have to keep turning it until all the colors match.”
“Children don’t read anymore?”
“Yeah, not so much,” Noah admitted.
“That explains a lot,” he said, glancing at the box on the counter. “You want me to put those away so you can go dress like a stoplight?”
“Nah, I don’t even know what I’d dress up as.” Noah pulled a couple books out of the box and checked the titles.
“It’s a bookstore, Noah. You need to go as a literary character,” Henry stated as if it were obvious. “What’s your favorite book?”
“I have millions. But I guess the fastest and easiest costume to put together is Harry Potter.”
“Ah, yes. I saw that in the children’s section. The series seems to be very popular, by the way your father decorated around it.”
“It is.” Noah flipped through the titles and frowned.
“What is it?” Henry asked, looking at the stack.
“Most of these are gay books—romances, YA. Why would someone move all these around? You’d think if they were against it, they’d mutilate them, not just move them around,” Noah mused.
Henry considered. “When I ran this establishment, we had a lot of teenage girls who’d come in and read some of the risqué parts of those women’s romances. Then they’d leave the book where it lay and run out giggling.”
“So maybe we’ve got a gay kid in town? I found these by the chairs. He must have sat and read them because he was afraid to take them home,” Noah said sadly. “I’ll keep an eye out for him.
“And do what?”
“Let him know it’s okay to read them here, that it’s a safe place.” Noah placed one of the books back on the shelf.
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear,” Henry said.
“Martin Luther King.”
“Amen, child.”
He piddled around the store for another hour, building himself up for what he expected to find at the party store over in Douglasville. Waiting until the last possible second was never a great idea for Halloween, but he’d figure it out. He’d just locked the front door when Kyle showed up on the sidewalk.
“Closing early?” Kyle asked.
“No, I have a little shopping to do. Want to come?”
“Sure.” He followed Noah over to the truck and climbed in the passenger side. “Where are we going?”
“First, to the party store in Douglasville to get costumes. Then we’re going t
o hit up a grocery store and see if anyone in a ten-mile radius still has any decent candy.” Noah sighed and turned the ignition.
“Costumes?”
“It’s Halloween,” Noah said with a glance at Kyle. “Did they not celebrate it where you grew up?”
“Celebrate it? No. It was the devil’s holiday. We prayed.”
“Okay, no costume for you, then.” Noah pulled out onto the main road and did a U-turn. Traffic was light as they drove toward the highway.
“What are you going to pretend to be?” Kyle fiddled with the window control and let his roll down a few inches.
“A boy wizard if I can find the stuff. They’re probably down to scraps, but all I really need is a cape and a wand. I have black glasses already, and I can draw on my forehead with a pen.”
Kyle gaped at him. “You’re going to become a wizard. They do black magic, Noah. You can’t do—”
“Kyle, it’s just a costume. I’m not actually going to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Thad says that it fosters a community spirit, and we need people on our side right now.”
“I don’t understand how dressing as a servant of the devil is going to help. God won’t want to help you.”
“I don’t think God has a grudge against Harry Potter. What about you? If we find something that won’t send you to Hell, you want to dress up?”
“Like what?”
“Clown? Firefighter? You could be a priest?”
“I think I’ll just stick with my coffee machines.” Kyle scooted lower in the seat, arms crossed, looking less than amused.
It took the better part of half an hour to pick their way through the carnage they found at the costume store. Severed heads, legs, random pieces of clothing, and even a long white beard lay discarded in the middle of an aisle. It was like Dorothy came to find her ruby slippers and accidently brought the tornado. But as Noah had suspected, he was able to find a generic cape and wand. As a bonus he even found a broom and a totally not Harry Potter scarf in the exact gold and rust colors with a generic “wizard’s scarf” tag.
Kyle followed him around, wide-eyed at all the masks still on display. Killer clowns, ghouls, zombies, and a wart-nosed witch. He didn’t touch any of them; he simply stared, disbelief warring with horror in his expression.
